Gear You Need for Filming a Promo Video

Gear Checklist

When Sal filmed his promo video, this is all he had with him:

Tascam DR-10L lav mic

Panasonic GH5

Canon 35mm lens

Audio

For audio, Sal had a Tascam DR-10L lav mic. It costs $199. If you don’t want to buy it, if you don’t want to invest $199, because you don’t see that you’ll use it ever again, Sal says this is totally fine. You just need to get some level of lav mic. Sal emphasizes that this becomes really, really important to audio. Audio is the most important aspect to a professional-level video.

Camera

Sal used a Panasonic GH5. That’s what Sal typically uses for all of his video. He filmed 4K but each one of your cameras, whether your Nikon, Sony, Canon, all of them, at this point, record video. So use the camera that you have. You don’t need to hold up your camera in the video and be like, “I’m Suzy, I have …” Nobody needs to see your camera. We get it, Suzy. You’re a photographer. Let the camera video you. That’s totally fine.

Lenses

Sal used the Canon 35-millimeter lens. He doesn’t want a wide-angle lens that’s going to skew everything. So, the 35 on the Micro Four Thirds sensor is going to look closer to a 50, so just keep in mind he is not filming at 35. Sal would like you to film it at 50.

Music

Get good music! Don’t go out there and buy bad music. It should be a no brainer. Sal says, unfortunately for many of you, it’s just not. He doesn’t know why. Bad taste in music? He doesn’t know. He says he’s not here to judge. He just knows it’s shitty music. Use SongFreedom, use Musicbed. These are two sites that have a great music selection, and are very, very inexpensive.

Editing

For editing, Sal uses Premiere. It’s part of the Adobe Suite. If you want to use Final Cut, use Final Cut. You can even use the tools that are built-in like iMovie. Honestly, there is nothing Sal did in his example video that could not be done with any linear editing system. He just dropped the clips next to each other. There’s nothing magical going on, no insane special effects. It’s super simple. So if you don’t have Premiere, there’s a ton of free tools out there that you can use.